When It Became Time To Hibernate, This Rescued Bear Began To Get Agitated

If you watched The Jungle Book as a kid, the lovable bear Baloo will likely have a special place in your heart. However, bears aren’t all singing and dancing. They’re actually quite solitary creatures, sleeping the winter months away in complete isolation from the world. For a bear, hibernation is a skill rather than an instinct, and this little cub learnt it just in the nick of time.

At five years of age, Luna, a beautiful brown bear, had her first chance to put her skills to use and hibernate for winter. A lifetime of misfortune and cruelty meant that she was unable to hibernate until very recently. In a stroke of luck, though, she’d managed to learn this important skill before being taken into captivity, which is rare for bears who are taken from the wild at a young age.

Safe and happy at a rescue center in Germany run by Four Paws, Luna’s traumatic youth seems worlds away. It’s probable that the vulnerable cub was taken into captivity at a very young age when her mom was shot by poachers. Thankfully, though, her mom had passed on some pearls of wisdom before her untimely death.